


in the shadow of your heart

by lapstax



Category: She-Ra and the Princesses of Power (2018)
Genre: Catra (She-Ra) Redemption, F/F, Healing, Post S3, Princess Adora (She-Ra), Rated T for minor swears, She-Ra and the Princesses of Power (2018) Season 3, Suicidal Ideation, Suicidal Thoughts, They need hugs, Trauma, catradora, don't worry they're both ok, i just wanted to write a fic of them learning to heal, soft, they talk about their feelings, this is set a few years after s3
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-06
Updated: 2019-09-06
Packaged: 2020-10-10 22:56:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,122
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20536001
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lapstax/pseuds/lapstax
Summary: “I was always a shadow of you, your heart.” She looks across the shimmering water in the moonlight. “You were everything.” Adora shakes her head.“I wasn’t.”“Everyone believed you were. I was never going to have what you did.” She sighs heavily. “No matter what I did.”-in which Catra and Adora heal.





	in the shadow of your heart

**Author's Note:**

> here's a playlist to listen to while you read:
> 
> https://open.spotify.com/playlist/4v15rBqcN78yFIZqn5vAvb?si=uO2udjzRRxCc0bxpcBlksQ

Catra wakes up with a start, heart pattering in her chest like it the rain does sometimes against the windows in Brightmoon. Catra has always found it calming. It’s not raining tonight, however.

The night is silent, save for her breathing and the rustling of vegetation outside. She hears the soft puff of breath Adora lets out as she sleeps beside her. In the soft light, Catra watches her form underneath the blanket, side rising and falling evenly. 

Catra thinks her breath is so loud.

She thinks her breath was louder at the portal. She dreams of it sometimes; today was one of those nights. All of her senses had been heightened. 

That’s how she had managed to find Adora. 

She remembers finding her with the desire to make her empty. Just as empty as her. Catra remembers every bruise, every scratch, that she ingrained into Adora’s skin. Her hands, gripping her shoulders, her throat. Always cold and empty, trying to draw her in.

Such is the tenacity of a black hole, after all. To take everything and devour it until it ceases to exist.

She remembers dragging herself, half bottomless corpse, half a semblance of a body, from the beaming maw of reality collapsing in on itself. If you asked her now, she wouldn’t be able to deliberate which part of her then was umbra and which was truly her body.

She remembers how angry she was; there was nothing that could fix her. Shadow Weaver would never love her, and Adora would never be hers. Not really. An alternate reality couldn’t even solve that for her.

She remembers letting go, falling into the dark and hoping her heart could finally rest. There had been the relief of nothing, and then there was pain. Pain was all she was.

She also remembers failing.

Adora, always a beacon of resilience, always so soft in the right places, finally fighting back. Finally severing her from her life with one simple blow. Catra doesn’t remember anything after that moment until she had fled from the Horde with Hordak.

Memories begin to rush through her mind, clouding her vision. She can see the desolate clouds of dust on a battlefield, blood staining the ground. Blood painting Adora’s face as She-ra; the finality in her eyes. She remembers the tatters of her pulling even more taut, unable to bear the weight of her actions.

She sees those stony eyes begin to soften as Catra began to make the right choices and heal the caverns of her heart.

Catra returns to the dark room. She can feel bile in her throat.

The room is too hot. Adora’s presence next to her takes up all the space in her lungs.

Quietly, so as not to wake her and because Catra has already taken enough from her, she peels away the sheets and makes her way out of the room.

She isn’t sure where she’s going, wandering the spacious Brightmoon halls, until she finds a series of steps and ends up on the roof. She sits gingerly, ears and tail ruffling in the wind. She cards some of the shortened hair back from her face as she gazes at the moons that keep the tides underneath her at bay. 

She watches the night conspire around her. The sea laps gently at the edge of the castle; the farther reaches of Brightmoon are bathed in the soft light emitting from the moon. The sleepshirt and shorts she’s wearing don’t protect her from the breeze, smelling of Salineas salt, and she’s shivering before long. She draws her legs up and wraps her arms around them. 

She thinks about Adora. 

Kind, steadfast Adora. A girl who would pull her close and then ruin her hair with a noogie in the same moment. No matter how much Catra had tried to make her hurt, she had always accepted it with open arms. Even when Catra had thought it was almost impossible to reconcile with her, she had immediately embraced her efforts. 

Adora didn’t deserve what Catra had done to her.

Catra doesn’t deserve Adora. Despite Brightmoon’s tentative acceptance of her, it had all been because of Adora’s resolve. They had been prepared to kill her and dump her body in the ocean. Though it was a few years ago, Catra still isn’t sure if she deserves the air her lungs breathe.

She doesn’t blame them; she’s certainly not afraid of it. She is familiar with death. At her hands, coursing through her body. 

She doesn’t realize her claws are unsheathed until she looks down, flexing them in and out. It wouldn’t be hard to sink them into her own throat. 

Catra loses herself in the violence that flits behind her eyelids.

She’s so absorbed in it that she doesn’t notice the figure that comes to sit beside her until it touches her shoulder. Catra jumps.

“Catra?”

Lo and behold, it’s Adora, clad in the tank top and sweats she went to bed in. Her hair is down, a product of one too many remarks Catra made about her expanding six-head. She retracts her claws.

“Is everything ok? What are you doing up here?” Catra tries to feign nonchalance.

“Psh, of course, Adora. I just needed some air.” Adora looks back from where she came, then skeptically back at Catra. Catra can see the grooves in her face from countless scars. It reminds her of the scores her claws made in the metal etching of their faces, back at their old bunk in the Horde. Catra can count almost every single one she had carved into her.

“Are you sure?” Adora asks, scooting closer. “I miss you. The bed’s cold without you.” 

“No!” she snaps, cringing away from her. Adora pulls back, startling. Her ears droop. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s ok,” she reassures her. “You know you can talk to me.”

Catra laughs now, colder than the wind seeping through her skin. “I doubt it, Adora.” 

“Bullshit. C’mon.” Adora bumps her shoulder. “I can handle it.” Her bare shoulder is also cold, and sends a twinge of guilt searing through Catra’s conscious. Adora had taken the trouble to wake up and look for her, all because she wanted to check on her. 

“No.” Her voice cracks as she hugs herself. “You shouldn’t have to comfort me about this.” She reaches out a hand anyway, squeezing her shoulder.

“What if I want to?” she asks softly, smiling. She looks much older, Catra thinks, but not in an unpleasant way; it’s a beauty that only comes after returning from tragedy, alive and thriving. Despite Adora's openness, it still doesn’t feel like long ago that there was only cold resolve in her expression. It makes her heart ache. She drops her gaze.

“Go back to bed, Adora. I’ll be fine.”

“Catra,” Adora pleads.

“You’re so perfect, you know that?” Catra blurts out. Adora gives her a bewilderedlook.

“You were allowed to come out of the Horde sparkling and heroic and I...wasn’t.” 

“Catra, you don’t get to just say that,” she starts, more confused than frustrated. Catra holds up a hand. 

“I’m not finished.” Adora crosses her legs, settles her head in her palms, and looks at her attentively.

“I– I just wish that you weren’t like that sometimes. Or that I didn’t see you like that. As something I never could be. I wish we could have just been together. Not as soldiers.” Catra lay her head against her legs. “I hate that I had to hurt you to get here.”

“Catra,” Adora tries again. Catra doesn’t let her finish.

“I was always a shadow of you, your heart.” She looks across the shimmering water in the moonlight. “You were everything.” Adora shakes her head.

“I wasn’t.”

“Everyone believed you were. I was never going to have what you did.” She sighs heavily. “No matter what I did.” 

Adora’s pitch began to raise. “I couldn’t prevent that!” Catra closes her eyes. She thinks her heart might fall apart if she fights with Adora now.

“You think I don’t know that? Everything I did reminded me of it. I hurt you beyond anything I even knew I was capable of just because of what Shadow Weaver and Hordak did to me. To us.” Tears leak from Catra’s closed eyelids. “And I– I just wish you had acknowledged it. What was happening to me. But what I hate the most is that I–” here her voice cracks “–I had to ruin so much to even get close to getting better. I didn’t want that.” 

Catra opens her eyes to see Adora, eyes shining with understanding and scooting closer, laying her head on her shoulder. Her head is warm against Catra. The returned stars blink above them, First Ones’ symbols threaded into the inky sky. Neither of them speak, but the words are ruminating between them. To Catra, it feels like eons with Adora laying on her shoulder.

“Things were sure fucked up then,” Adora finally murmurs, after they’ve turned to stone. Catra lets out a surprised bark.

“You’re not wrong,” she snickers. Adora lifts her head to look at her. She raises a hand and caresses the scar that runs across Catra’s brow.

“But that doesn’t mean we haven’t been fixing it.” she says fiercely. “You– you’re so strong Catra, so strong. You’ve come so far. Even if I was here to help you, you did this all yourself, despite everything. You made every decision to get yourself here, even if it was hard.” Catra opens her mouth to reply, but Adora cuts her off.

“I didn’t do the right things for you all the time back then. I wish I did. But the truth is, I make a lot of mistakes. I wasn’t perfect; not for you, not for Etheria, not for anyone. Not yet. And you know what? We’re still here. We made it work, despite everything. And I’m going to keep making mistakes. But I want to learn from them. And from you.” Adora takes her hands. “I wish we hadn’t been pitted against each other from the start. And I’m so sorry for that.” The tears lie heavy on Catra’s fur.

“I watched you do the worst and come back from it. You were hurting and lashed out, and then you came back from it. You don’t need to apologize for that.” Adora brushes the errant locks of her hair from her face.

“I– I’m sorry for that, too. For not being there and understanding when you needed me to be.”

“Me too,” Catra rasps, throat tightening with the sincerity of Adora’s words. “I made a lot of mistakes. Huge, reality-altering mistakes.” Adora snorts. She smiles crookedly.

“But you’re right,” Catra continues, gaining momentum. “We are here, right now. In the present, fixing everything. I’m not angry anymore. Everything that happened to us wasn’t our fault.” She looks at the soft, open planes of Adora’s face, shining with affection. “And I’m sorry, too. You weren’t responsible for everything I did.” She drops her gaze.

“I’ll be sorry forever.” Adora brings both of her hands up to smooth the fur on the sides of her face. Catra thinks about how fortunate it is she ditched her mask all those years ago. 

“I think we’ve said enough sorries,” she says gently. She takes a deep breath and presses her forehead against Adora’s.

“We’re going to be okay,” she breathes. “We’re going to rule the world. And I’m to beat your ass at Bow’s stupid tablet game over and over until you’re a sack of bones.” Adora laughs, loud and ringing, into the night.

“Whatever you say, dummy.” Catra takes a deep breath and looks into her eyes, tear-filled and waiting. 

“And Adora? I know you’re not perfect. You suffered, too. You aren’t responsible for what happened to us. You don’t need to apologize for things out of your control. You didn’t deserve the brunt of the fucking world, much less for my shit.” She wraps her arms around Adora’s middle.

“I know, okay?” Adora nods, tears falling. She tries to pull back from Catra’s arms, but she stiffens her grip. “I know.” Adora holds her tight with a muted sob.

Catra moves her hands up to cradle her face, kissing her feverishly. Adora wraps her arms around her waist, keeping them grounded. “I love you, Adora,” she murmurs, wiping the tears from her cheeks, kissing the scars on her mouth. “I love you,” she repeats. Adora holds her tighter.

“I love you too,” she says, pressing a kiss to her temple.

“I want to go back to bed,” Catra whispers, looking back at her. Adora smiles, stands and takes her hand, leading them back where they came.

**Author's Note:**

> thank you for reading!! this is my first published fic so pls tell me how i did
> 
> the title is a line from 'cosmic love' by florence and the machine
> 
> if you wanna yell at me, here's my tumblr:
> 
> https://www.tumblr.com/blog/lapstaxx


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